Season 9 Discussion Thread [NO SPOILERS, DF airings only]

@Background Pony #1370  
Brilliance in one domain doesn’t mutually exclude ignorance in others.

So I just saw Growing Up is Hard To Do, and it was good.
 
I don’t have a lot to say. because the whole story is pretty on the nose. And that’s fine. Sometimes a nice game of “spot the reference” is all you need.

So anyone want to mention Sweetie Belle can teleport?

@EotD  
Pumpkin Cake teleported during one of her magical surges. If I had to theorycraft, I’d say that unicorns might have a teleportation instinct that they evolved as a survival mechanism.

@EotD
 
“Twilight Time” seems like it may have done her some favors overall, but it looks like her stamina could possibly use some work?
 
(It has been mentioned on this thread before, but it was what, five times?)
 
 
@DerpyFast
 
That too.

@EotD  

Well I mean if Trixie can pull it off…
 
I kid, I kid. A little.
 
Actually I think it’s worth noting that it wasn’t the cleanest teleport ever. She ends up halfway sticking out of a hay bale which kind of makes me think it’s a very good thing that they didn’t hide behind a bunch of rocks instead. That has “transporter mishap” written all over it.
 

 
Also, it’s brief, but I get the impression that the effort of doing that probably took a lot out of her, even if it was just basically moving a short ways across the room. Safe to say, all those lessons with Twilight probably paid off, but she’s still not on par with her, magically.
 
 
@DerpyFast  

I could see that. We know Starlight (in the past) has fueled her magic using emotions. Strong fear would probably work well for something like that.

@Background Pony #1370  
I mean I’m just saying this is something Starlight had no idea how to do, and Twilight had difficulty teleporting two creatures when she first did a mutlti person teleport
 

@EotD  

That’s a fair point. But then for all we know, she never had anyone teaching her to do it either. Starlight and Sweetie Belle and even Trixie, you can make the argument, had someone there to actually help them learn to do it properly. Twilight might have just trained herself in the technique over time, which would explain why it was much harder for her in the early days.

@Background Pony #1370  
She’s Celestia’s prized pupil at Celestia’s school for gifted Unicorns. Pretty sure Twilight has some help in that regard.

@EotD
 
Starlight had no idea how to teleport? When?

bloofy’s cosin is a super wierdo  

@EotD
 
I guess it can be chalked off as the Wish spell applying some sort of natural growth to her current magical talent, if she’s a prodigy as a filly, then she gets to be a prodigy as a mare.
 
It makes more sense than Trixie being able to.

@Background Pony #1370
 
IIRC, I think Twilight literally first learned teleportation from watching Nightmare Moon teleport, so her not having it all right at first is something that makes sense, whereas with Sweetie Belle, if she’d learned something about teleportation before doing this, she’d know a few things about how to do it safely (in the sense of “not getting burned”), due to the probable teacher(s) being certain to know what they’re doing at that point.

@Spinny  
In the Cutie Map, and in Remark. Remember when she was surrounded by all the townsfolk? She didn’t teleport away, she did a magic push and then booked it.
 
Ok can’t find the first scene but here’s the second one  

 
My assumption was that she couldn’t figure out how to to teleportation, like gathering all the magical data or what have you and then moving it elsewhere, so in the end all she had was this bubble of energy that she had to release, thus giving that shockwave, like an incomplete attempt at teleportation, but that was before we found out she literally the most powerful unicorn in existence

@EotD
 
Starlight teleported the scroll right out of Spike’s hand in Cutie Re-Mark.
 
But yes, she didn’t teleport herself once in S5, not that she generally needed to.

@EotD
 
Yeah, S5 premiere and S5 finale Starlight might as well be two different characters, in more ways than one.

@AC97  
She kind of did in Map but couldn’t. I couldn’t find a clip of it, but back in the town when her secret was revealed and the townsfolks were gathering around her, instead of teleporting she did that magic push thing and booked it. Teleporting would have been much easier and more efficient then. Her not doing it probably indicated a lack of ability to do so at the time

@Poison Trail  
Oh yeah indeed. Heck I’d argue there are two Starlight’s in Remark as well

Fact-checked myself: Twilight first teleported after Nightmare Moon teleported her, and she brought a hoof to her head immediately afterwards after she did it, as if she wasn’t used to that, in addition to her taking a notable amount of charge time.
 
So in conclusion, I think Twilight never teleported herself outside of maybe infancy before S1, so Spike suffering complications as a part of it could have been due to her not having quite learned it properly as of that point, which again, if Twilight taught Sweetie Belle, the safety pointers would probably be known to the latter, unlike when Twilight first learned, due to it being taught on a level further than “just experienced it less than 40 seconds ago.”

@EotD
 
It’s possible she could teleport items but not herself. She does become a lot more ridiculous after becoming Twilight’s pupil. One of the things we see them practicing is self teleportation even.

@EotD  

Again, a fair point. I suppose the argument to that is, maybe none of her teachers were able to do it themselves. I mean Sunburst proves it’s possible to be knowledgeable in the theory and “how” portions of complex magic without necessarily being able to do it yourself. If it’s an ability that exists mostly as a flight response for the majority of unicorns (as DerpyFast suggested), maybe active control of it is hard to learn without having someone who already knows how show you, or without being sufficiently gifted to just intuit it out.
 
I mean it’s still a stretch, but if your goal is to make knowing how to do that work with the world as we’ve seen it, I’m sure there are ways to make it fit.

You know, correct me if I’m wrong, but the finale hasn’t actually aired early anywhere yet, has it? It was leaked, yes, once again due to Hasbro’s laughably poor security, but it hasn’t aired first in another country yet, has it?

@Spinny  
Well Denmark technically posted it early, much the same way iTunes used to post an episode on their store front by mistake, if that counts, otherwise no, Hasbro pretty much cut off all official early airings right after Daring Doubt (ie right after the Denmark posting)
 
Edit: It was either Denmark or it was the Netherlands. Either the Danish or the Dutch, can’t recall which at the moment

@EotD
 
It was the Dutch, so the Netherlands did it.
 
I still almost regret waking up to “everything got leaked.”
 
Not the best of fandom days, especially for moderators, and show staff. The hack didn’t help either.

CMC in The Stare Master
 
CMC in the Last Crusade